The topic of this PhD study was chosen to match a few initial statements. First, the research point should be near, so it was relevant to the local community and history. Secondly, it had to relate with urbanism and architecture, following the previous studies that the PhD student had made in her master degree. As a result, the theme proposed was to develop the urban topography of Valencia in the Roman ages.
Urban studies in the Hispanic cities have increased in the last few years with some notable examples as Tarraco (Macías et alii 2007) and Merida (Mateos 2011), or even general ones (Burch et alii 2013). Due to the increase of urban archaeology in the last three decades and the arrival of new techniques and fields of study (spatial syntaxes, suburbia analyses…), we could bring a different perspective.
Based on these papers and the Valencia’s own difficulties, we chose and adapted ...
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The topic of this PhD study was chosen to match a few initial statements. First, the research point should be near, so it was relevant to the local community and history. Secondly, it had to relate with urbanism and architecture, following the previous studies that the PhD student had made in her master degree. As a result, the theme proposed was to develop the urban topography of Valencia in the Roman ages.
Urban studies in the Hispanic cities have increased in the last few years with some notable examples as Tarraco (Macías et alii 2007) and Merida (Mateos 2011), or even general ones (Burch et alii 2013). Due to the increase of urban archaeology in the last three decades and the arrival of new techniques and fields of study (spatial syntaxes, suburbia analyses…), we could bring a different perspective.
Based on these papers and the Valencia’s own difficulties, we chose and adapted a proper methodology. The first step was doing an exhaustive revision of all the published bibliography of the roman city. In addition, we should revise all the urban excavations not only in the last few decades (since the creation of the patrimonial surveillance services in the mid-20th century) but also in ancient times (from 16th to 19th century).
However, the magnitude of the work implied in that revision and reinterpretation of the remains lead us to reduce the temporal frame of the present doctoral thesis. As Dr. Ribera extensively studied the Roman Republican city in his PhD (Ribera 1998) and the same author now is researching about the late antiquity (Ribera 2000, Ribera 2007), we decided to focus the present research from the early emperors until the beginning of the decline.
Two historical relevant facts of the city support that division. Firstly, the reconstruction of the city in the first years of the Augustan period after the destruction done by the Pompeian forces in the 75 BC during the Sertorian war. Some excavations as L’Almoina had documented the foundational rituals belonging to the rebuilding (Álvarez et alii 2013).
The second point is the destruction made between the years 270-280 AD. It is archaeological documented in mostly all the interventions in the city, some of them with treasures that permitted us to date it with security, even there is no written documents to support it (Ribera 2000, Ribera 2007). After that point, it begins a completely new period for the city urbanism.
A Roman city is much more than a set of streets and houses; it is an entity working from the overlap of the different elements composing it. Therefore, it was necessary to define every part of it, the city limits and how every element works in relation with the whole city. With all that facts in mind, we had to stablish the objectives of the investigation:
• Making a catalog of urban excavations: We wanted to make a corpus of all the archaeological sites in the city, old and new ones. In this catalog, we aim to cover every excavation, including the ones without roman remains, in order to define the evolution of the city.
• Describing the urban perimeter and the suburbia: the city of Valentia didn’t have complete walls between the 1st and the 3rd century BC, so it is difficult to delineate its limits. We also want to delimitate the different suburbia and to relate them with the city itself.
• Study the street grill: The roads that articulate the city are the union between all the city elements. The right definition of the streets allows us to study not only the city map but also the economic working of the city. In order to fulfill this point, we decide to follow the latest publications on space syntax as Kaiser (2011).
• Analyze the different parts of the city and suburb: We wanted to define in Valentia, the city parts explained by Vitruvius, and to identify all the suburbs seen by archaeology.
• Diachronic analysis of the city between the early emperors until the beginning of the decline: Could we find different archaeological moments? What was the city evolution? What were the general and specific processes that cause of the changes?
So we try to solve the general problems of the roman city of Valentia. Based in the urban archaeology, we establish the different parts of the city, analyzing them one by one.